Success for one Kennedy, but not the other
THE NEW HAMPSHIRE primary became a fixture on the political landscape in 1952 when its Democratic voters ended President Harry Truman's reelection prospects by choosing Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver and its Republican voters chose General Dwight Eisenhower. Ike's subsequent nomination and election was the first of 10 presidential contests won by a winner of his party's New Hampshire primary between 1952 and 1988.
The first successful Democrat to follow the New Hampshire path was Massachusetts Senator Jack Kennedy, who was the first to announce for the 1960 nomination and who had to run as an outsider because he was an atypical contender. He was young, urban, and Catholic. The last Catholic nominated was Manhattan-born New York Governor Al Smith, who carried only eight states in his 1928 loss.
While Kennedy's name recognition was high and polls gave him a positive standing, many Democratic power centers were opposed. Congressional Democrats and Southerners championed Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and liberal Democrats supported Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Kennedy romped in New Hampshire with 85.2 percent, though it would take victories in Wisconsin and in heavily Protestant West Virginia to put the nomination within reach. But it was the Granite State that had launched his successful journey to the White House as the nation's first Catholic president.
Twenty years later, New Hampshire treated another Kennedy candidacy very differently. President Jimmy Carter's deepening unpopularity dismayed congressional Democrats, who were fearful of electoral disaster and pleaded with Senator Ted Kennedy to enter the primaries. Almost a decade had passed since Mary Jo Kopechne had died in Kennedy's 1969 automobile accident at Chappaquiddick. Kennedy seemed ready to restore the family legacy.
Fearing a Kennedy challenge and in the midst of a critical energy shortage, Carter promised the farmers of Iowa, who were the first to support his 1976 candidacy, as much diesel fuel as they would need for spring planting. He assured New Hampshire residents that their 1979 fuel allocation would be maintained at previous levels while it was diminished in other states. But Carter's numbers continued to drop until the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran by loyalists of the Ayatollah Khomeini resuscitated his approval ratings into the low 60s.
As Carter soared, Kennedy stumbled, offering a semi-coherent answer to a question posed by Roger Mudd of CBS News as to why he should be the next president. With Carter looking strong in New Hampshire, the Kennedy camp chose to offset a loss there with victories the following week in the Massachusetts and Vermont primaries. Because the Carter people conceded Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts, Vermont became a battleground.
I was asked to write a speech for his upcoming visit to Burlington's Memorial Auditorium. I prepared two speeches - one on why Kennedy should be the next president to address the questions left unanswered in the Roger Mudd interview and another on the impact of rising oil prices on New England and the nation. The second speech was loaded with facts and figures and was better suited for an economics class than a presidential campaign.
Early on a frigid Vermont morning, some 1,500 Vermonters assembled to hear Kennedy. He was fighting off a cold and took the energy speech and proceeded to read it. Like the Mudd interview, it did not go well; the numbers were jumbled together and it became increasingly less intelligible to the audience.
Out of nowhere, six flannel-wearing women with woolen caps on their heads leapt to their feet and chanted in unison, "Chappaquiddick. Chappaquiddick. Chappaquiddick." The stunned Vermonters noticed that three of the women had beards, presumably as a result of taking male hormones. Vigorous debates ensued as to whether these were women with beards or men with breasts. The energy speech was completely forgotten.
Barely 15 people signed up for the Kennedy campaign that day. As anticipated, Carter captured the New Hampshire primary over Kennedy, and a week later Kennedy won the Massachusetts primary.
As for the Vermont primary held the same day, the results were discouraging. Carter buried Kennedy 73.1 to 25.5 percent. Kennedy would later win the Connecticut and Rhode Island primaries, but the damage was done. Carter was renominated and became the worst defeated Democratic incumbent in American history. Kennedy never ran again for president and Ronald Reagan, who had won the Republican vote in New Hampshire, went on to be the primary's eighth consecutive presidential winner.
Garrison Nelson is a professor of political science at University of Vermont.
